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How an Audiobook Gets Made—Inside Narration With Victoria Lynn Arbor · Reality Writes

• 0:05
  Ellie Alexander: Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Reality Writes.
• 0:10
  Ellie Alexander: I am author Ellie Alexander.
• 0:11
  Ellie Alexander: This is the podcast where we talk about all things writer-ish, bookish, and we try to take you behind the scenes.
• 0:17
  Ellie Alexander: And I am here with the tech guy today, and we are gonna go behind the scenes, literally.
• 0:22
  Tech Guy: Yeah, it is.
• 0:23
  Tech Guy: Actually, I'm gonna be behind the scenes the whole episode.
• 0:25
  Tech Guy: So that's except for right now, obviously.
• 0:28
  Tech Guy: But uh no, we have a very special guest uh for this episode, and I am excited because this is one topic that I just can't wrap my head around.
• 0:40
  Tech Guy: Like the just the sheer amount of work that must go into this guest's profession is just bonkers to me.
• 0:50
  Ellie Alexander: Right?
• 0:51
  Ellie Alexander: I know.
• 0:51
  Ellie Alexander: Okay, so we're dragging out the mystery for you, darlings.
• 0:54
  Ellie Alexander: But today our guest is Victoria Lynn Arbor.
• 0:57
  Ellie Alexander: She is a friend of mine from my writers' group, and she is a professional audiobook narrator.
• 1:01
  Ellie Alexander: So she's gonna take us inside her home studio, and we're gonna do a deep dive on what it's like to find an audiobook, uh, the author's perspective, the narrator's perspective, the amount of time and effort, all of the things.
• 1:18
  Ellie Alexander: Um, and I have learned so much from Victoria over the last few years in our writers' group, too, that I haven't even known as an author.
• 1:25
  Ellie Alexander: The one caveat that I will say before we bring her on is that there are different paths to publication when it comes to audiobooks too.
• 1:35
  Ellie Alexander: And we just did a Reality Writes episode about paths to publication and how there are many, many these days.
• 1:41
  Ellie Alexander: And as far as audiobooks, if you're traditionally published, your publishing house or your agent will either have in-house services where they're producing the audio or they will contract out with audio publishers.
• 1:54
  Ellie Alexander: So you, as the author, don't have a lot of input in that process, short of maybe picking narrators from their group of approved narrators and or, you know, providing insight in terms of words and how you're going to pronounce things.
• 2:10
  Ellie Alexander: I always think back to my OG series, The Meg Reed Mysteries, and it would be things like it's the Willamette River, not the Willamette.
• 2:17
  Ellie Alexander: Willamet.
• 2:18
  Ellie Alexander: Willamet Willamette or Siskiy Mountains or you know that kind of thing.
• 2:24
  Ellie Alexander: Um, but then if you're indie published, you would work directly with somebody like Victoria Lynn and you would go through that whole process.
• 2:31
  Ellie Alexander: So I'm excited for her to share what that's like and yeah, give us a look at how many hours it takes to produce an audiobook.
• 2:40
  Tech Guy: Yeah, and that's that's what I am very excited to hear about because I can tell you right now, I would not have the patience to do what she does because, well, the patience to do what she does or to actually be a post-producer for an audiobook narrator, which hopefully she will talk about too.
• 3:00
  Tech Guy: Because I will tell you right now that it takes a while to edit every episode of Reality Rights, which I do myself.
• 3:09
  Tech Guy: And these are usually short programs, you know, 25 to 45 minutes.
• 3:15
  Tech Guy: A lot of edits go in.
• 3:16
  Tech Guy: I have to cut out ums, uhs, cars driving by because we don't have a professional studio, all the things.
• 3:23
  Tech Guy: So I can't even imagine how much work must go into narrating a 75 to 85,000-word book.
• 3:31
  Tech Guy: That is just I'm so excited.
• 3:34
  Ellie Alexander: Yeah, it's gonna be a great episode.
• 3:36
  Ellie Alexander: So without further ado, let's bring on Victoria Lynn Arbor.
• 3:40
  Ellie Alexander: Well, I am so excited to have my friend Victoria Lynn Arbor here with me today.
• 3:45
  Ellie Alexander: Uh, we are in a writer's group together.
• 3:47
  Ellie Alexander: So it's been so fun not only to write with you and get feedback on bookish stuff, but also to watch your process of becoming a very successful audio narrator.
• 3:59
  Ellie Alexander: And also from the writing lens, what an immense amount of time and effort and backend goes to taking a book and turning it into an audiobook.
• 4:10
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 4:10
  Speaker: It it's and we met because I was writing romance.
• 4:14
  Speaker: Yes.
• 4:14
  Speaker: So yeah.
• 4:16
  Speaker: And now I'm now I'm narrating uh, and my books are sitting there.
• 4:20
  Speaker: Someday I'll get back to them.
• 4:22
  Ellie Alexander: Well, you know, it's all it's all you're still in the book world.
• 4:24
  Ellie Alexander: Okay, well, let's start with sort of your background because you also have this acting background, which I think is fascinating and and sort of does track to the idea of like leading you into narration in some way, shape, or form.
• 4:37
  Speaker: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
• 4:38
  Speaker: There's a lot of, I know a lot of great narrators who do not have the acting background, but it helps a lot.
• 4:45
  Speaker: And that said, narration is a very different medium than stage work.
• 4:50
  Speaker: And you're in a tiny little booth, and you know, I actually at I think I've got five feet here, and this is considered a decent size amount of space for recording.
• 5:02
  Speaker: So um a lot of the acting background um is valuable for things like warm-ups and character development and a lot of the research that goes into it ahead of time.
• 5:16
  Speaker: But um I've been just doing uh when I was actually in the corporate world and I would go down to the studios that they had and just you know volunteer to do uh tech videos and um tutorials.
• 5:33
  Speaker: And so over the years, I've done a whole bunch of different things, the radio and commercial.
• 5:39
  Speaker: And when I started this, I actually was thinking I was gonna go into voiceover.
• 5:43
  Speaker: But you know, I work in a bookstore, I was working on a novel, and um, and yeah, all things books.
• 5:52
  Speaker: I realized I was very intimidated by long form narration, uh voice work, and but I just fell in love with doing a 10-hour book, all the characters, working with the authors.
• 6:06
  Speaker: It's been a it's been really a great gig.
• 6:10
  Ellie Alexander: That's so amazing.
• 6:10
  Ellie Alexander: Okay, but uh let's touch on a little bit, like because I didn't really think about this, and I've had, you know, many 45 plus of my titles over the years in audio form.
• 6:21
  Ellie Alexander: Although, spoiler alert, I never listened to my own because it's so painful.
• 6:24
  Ellie Alexander: Not because of the narrator, but to be like, oh, I should have had a better word choice there or whatever.
• 6:29
  Ellie Alexander: But I never thought about the fact that narrating a book is very different than acting, right?
• 6:34
  Ellie Alexander: So what's the balance point of like how much you bring in versus how much it's reading?
• 6:40
  Speaker: Yeah, no, it's a great, uh, it's a great point because one of the things, and I think the difference between getting a narrator who's, you know, just you know, off ACX in their first five books versus somebody who's been doing it for a while is in acting, when you're on stage, you are center stage and you are the highlight and you are bringing everything, and you want that review to be about you.
• 7:06
  Speaker: In narration, it's about the author.
• 7:09
  Speaker: In narration, you are embodying the author's words.
• 7:13
  Speaker: And if you are successful, people may not know who the narrator is after it's over because you don't want them to be like, oh, she did a, you know, that character really well.
• 7:26
  Speaker: You are hopefully, as a narrator, I'm getting you immersed into the story and I'm serving the author's words rather than aggrandizing myself.
• 7:38
  Ellie Alexander: Yeah, but it's so fascinating because I never think about it, I would not have made that distinction prior to you talking about that in our writer's group.
• 7:44
  Ellie Alexander: I'm like, oh, it is true because it's such a different experience to immerse yourself in a story versus watching a performance on the stage, like you're saying.
• 7:52
  Ellie Alexander: Okay, so in the intro, I was talking about the fact that there are like in regular publishing, there are so many paths based on how you are published.
• 8:02
  Ellie Alexander: So for like traditional publishing, your publishing house is probably gonna sell those secondary rights.
• 8:07
  Ellie Alexander: I don't usually have a say in who's doing the narration, that sort of thing.
• 8:11
  Ellie Alexander: But for indie, authors can seek out narrators like you to hire.
• 8:16
  Ellie Alexander: So let's talk a little bit about that process first, and then we can do a deeper dive into some of the things to be on the lookout for: pros, cons, etc.
• 8:27
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 8:28
  Speaker: So as you mentioned, there are various ways to get your work published.
• 8:33
  Speaker: So for traditional authors, you know, I know that you've done both, but uh, for your traditionally published books, your publisher is probably going out and either they're doing it in-house or they're hiring a production company.
• 8:46
  Speaker: My goal as a narrator is to be on as many rosters of those production companies as I can.
• 8:52
  Speaker: And uh, when I meet new authors, I tell them, I'm on podium's roster.
• 8:58
  Speaker: So if you're gonna use podium, you might ask for me or high gravity.
• 9:03
  Speaker: So I'm promoting those rosters, but that's our traditional publishing.
• 9:06
  Speaker: If you're an independent author, uh, I hear all the time, I can't do an audiobook, it's gonna be too expensive.
• 9:13
  Speaker: Or, you know, there are a lot, just a lot of misinformation about whether it's achievable.
• 9:19
  Speaker: And as if you wrote it, an audiobook is an achievable goal.
• 9:23
  Speaker: So um, one of the main platforms for um getting your indie book done would be uh actually, I don't want to start with ACX, I'm gonna mention uh the production companies just a little bit more because uh there are a whole series of them that will you own the rights, they will find you uh a handful of narrators, they will work with you, you spend more money, and the production company will do the work.
• 9:49
  Speaker: So you can go to a production company just the same way as someone like Hachette goes to the production company and has them do Ellie Alexander's books, uh, I don't know if you use Hashek McMillan.
• 10:03
  Ellie Alexander: Right, yeah, yeah.
• 10:04
  Speaker: Um, you know, um so as an indie author, you can go that route and you can find a production company who'll do a great job and you're gonna pay a little more and you're gonna end up and they're gonna do your distribution and the whole thing.
• 10:16
  Speaker: If you are really on a um a shoe strap and you want to do it all yourself, so ACX is the platform that Audible uses, uh that Amazon uses for their books.
• 10:32
  Speaker: It's an author narrator exchange.
• 10:35
  Speaker: Um so basically, as an author, you put you have to get your your rights to your book, your audio rights, you put up your information, you're you put up a three to five minute piece snippet for an audition.
• 10:51
  Speaker: So one of the problems we have is you know, we'll have authors who are like, here's my whole manuscript.
• 10:56
  Speaker: Don't do that.
• 10:57
  Ellie Alexander: No, right.
• 10:59
  Ellie Alexander: Please don't.
• 11:00
  Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
• 11:00
  Speaker: Or they'll be like, here's my first chapter.
• 11:03
  Speaker: And it's like, no.
• 11:04
  Speaker: Um, anywhere from a a page to maybe three, four pages of text is all you want to put up for someone to audition.
• 11:15
  Speaker: And it should include like action, it should include um some uh if there are people, uh male voices, female voices, alien voices.
• 11:26
  Speaker: Um, so if you want to hear anything specific, right?
• 11:29
  Speaker: That that's your time, the three to five minutes.
• 11:31
  Speaker: And it goes out there and the narrators see it.
• 11:34
  Speaker: You set a price range.
• 11:37
  Speaker: Um the price range can be royalty share, where you're gonna get brand new narrators who may not have done a book before, royalty share plus, which means that you're probably gonna end up paying for production uh for the post-production, or anywhere from you know, 100 to 200, 200 to 400.
• 11:59
  Speaker: So you set your prices and then narrators audition for it, and you get you can get lots and lots and lots of um auditions very quickly.
• 12:13
  Ellie Alexander: What's it like being on the other end where you're getting, you know, requests for auditions?
• 12:19
  Ellie Alexander: Like, how do you go about choosing what books you match with?
• 12:23
  Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
• 12:25
  Speaker: So um I gotta be honest, I use ANM, I use ACX mostly for my practice.
• 12:32
  Speaker: Like if you're a working narrator, you want to be narrating something every day.
• 12:36
  Speaker: And there are books, there are times where I don't have a book going.
• 12:39
  Speaker: Um, and so, or I want to practice a new genre, I want to, you know, try something out.
• 12:46
  Speaker: And I use the ACX auditions for that.
• 12:48
  Speaker: And I'll, you know, put those and I'll put those in.
• 12:51
  Speaker: But that's one way where I can get new scripts every day and practice them.
• 12:55
  Speaker: Um I set we set filters.
• 12:57
  Speaker: So as a narrator, if you have a royalty share book out there, I'm not going to see it.
• 13:03
  Speaker: Because um I have mindset if you have a royalty share, royalty plus real royalty share plus, then um then I will see it.
• 13:16
  Speaker: And I do that because if you're not willing to put money into any money at all into it, you're asking me to absorb all the risk.
• 13:25
  Speaker: Um and and uh, you know, when I look for books, I'm like if I'm especially if I'm looking at a lower cost point or royalty share plus, I'm looking, is it a really good cover?
• 13:40
  Ellie Alexander: Yeah, right.
• 13:43
  Speaker: Is it a good premise?
• 13:44
  Speaker: Is it one of the genres that I will enjoy doing?
• 13:47
  Speaker: Because ACX, the rates for me are gonna be lower.
• 13:51
  Speaker: I'm not gonna make as much money.
• 13:52
  Speaker: So it better be a book that I am gonna have a uh fun time uh doing.
• 13:58
  Speaker: So that's why I'm trying to time versus money thing.
• 14:05
  Speaker: Uh, when I have many books, when I have books going, um, I may not even look on that.
• 14:12
  Speaker: I have a website and I try and, you know, every time I fill out one of my audition messages, I'm like, yeah, contact me directly because I may not be on, you know, I may not be on regularly.
• 14:24
  Speaker: And ACX says it's a it's a standalone mailbox.
• 14:27
  Speaker: So you don't get it, it doesn't come to you your email or anything.
• 14:32
  Ellie Alexander: Nice.
• 14:33
  Ellie Alexander: Okay, let's talk about.
• 14:34
  Ellie Alexander: So you find a book, you're a match with the author, talk us through the process of what happens next.
• 14:41
  Ellie Alexander: You get like a 70,000-word manuscript.
• 14:45
  Ellie Alexander: I see that you're in your studio today, but what how do you approach it?
• 14:51
  Speaker: Uh so there's a bunch of other steps, unfortunately.
• 14:55
  Speaker: So it does take a while.
• 14:56
  Speaker: So I get uh I get an offer.
• 14:58
  Speaker: If this is ACX, um, I actually tr usually try and bring that offer offline.
• 15:03
  Speaker: And we talked a little bit earlier about the number of scams going on.
• 15:07
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 15:08
  Speaker: So um some narrators they go through ACX, you never talk to them, they never talk to you, you get your audiobook all as well.
• 15:16
  Speaker: Great.
• 15:17
  Speaker: Um, I like to set up a meeting with my authors.
• 15:20
  Speaker: So I usually have a meeting, I have a welcome packet that tells them everything I'm expecting them to provide to me.
• 15:27
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 15:28
  Speaker: I have a contract where I tell them everything I'm gonna provide to them.
• 15:32
  Speaker: Um, and we have a phone call where we discuss it.
• 15:37
  Speaker: Right.
• 15:37
  Speaker: So once all of that is taken care of and uh we all know our expectations, um, there's always a 15-minute sample.
• 15:46
  Speaker: So they've sent me their manuscript and I start prepping the manuscript.
• 15:51
  Speaker: They send me a sample.
• 15:53
  Speaker: 15 minutes is about five pages, depends on how dense your writing is.
• 15:57
  Speaker: And that is an opportunity.
• 16:01
  Speaker: So you've offered me a job.
• 16:03
  Speaker: Let's just assume Ellie has an indie book and she wants Victoria Lynn to do her book.
• 16:07
  Speaker: And so she sends it to her.
• 16:09
  Speaker: And this, I do a 15-minute snippet, which hopefully has your main characters in it.
• 16:15
  Speaker: And then that gives you the opportunity.
• 16:18
  Speaker: So one of our writing group, I just finished her book for Storm Publishing, and in my 15-minute snippet, she's like, Yeah, the hero sounds dumb.
• 16:28
  unknown: Okay.
• 16:28
  Speaker: All right.
• 16:29
  Ellie Alexander: Notes I can do, I can work.
• 16:32
  Speaker: I want it fast-paced, I want it like Gilmore Girls, fast-paced.
• 16:36
  Speaker: Okay.
• 16:36
  Speaker: Okay.
• 16:37
  Speaker: So we go back and we do another 15 minute, or you know, I take the three, you know, she liked this, or she liked that.
• 16:45
  Speaker: So we leave the thing she liked, we adjust the thing she doesn't like.
• 16:49
  Speaker: Once we have approval on that 15-minute snippet, that's it.
• 16:54
  Speaker: That's the author's input right there.
• 16:57
  Speaker: And I take it and I run with it.
• 16:59
  Speaker: And then I do, you know, my uh, you know, 10 hour, 11-hour book and hope that they love it.
• 17:08
  Ellie Alexander: Right.
• 17:09
  Ellie Alexander: Okay, so 10 hours, break that down.
• 17:12
  Ellie Alexander: Like how for me, you know, we talk a lot about in our writing group.
• 17:15
  Ellie Alexander: Like, I write four or five hours a day, but I by one or two o'clock in the afternoon, I'm spent because I have my routine that I've been doing for so many years.
• 17:22
  Ellie Alexander: Like, you're not recording all 10 hours in one stint, right?
• 17:26
  Ellie Alexander: I mean, how would your voice survive?
• 17:29
  Speaker: No, it wouldn't.
• 17:30
  Speaker: It wouldn't.
• 17:30
  Speaker: And um, because there there are a lot of other steps in making an audiobook, so I might be doing prep, you know, I might be prepping one book while I'm narrating another book.
• 17:42
  Speaker: But the actual narration time, I try for a minimum of two hours a day.
• 17:48
  Speaker: And that's usually one hour sitting, a couple, you know, 15-minute break, another hour.
• 17:55
  Speaker: And then if I if I have availability and we have quiet time, there's no water running, there's no kids in the house, then I might do another hour at night.
• 18:05
  Speaker: But typically it's maybe, you know, I'll do if I'm not on some sort of deadline, I'm looking at maybe two hours of actual talking into the microphone.
• 18:15
  Speaker: Every hour of finished, we call them per finished, it's finished hour.
• 18:20
  Speaker: Every finished hour takes anywhere from two to five hours to produce, right?
• 18:29
  Speaker: So my average, my average is probably around three hours for every finished hour.
• 18:36
  Speaker: And that that is um, you know, I might have put in 20 hours in prepping your book.
• 18:44
  Speaker: So I get this manuscript, I read it for the second time, highlighting it and writing notes.
• 18:53
  Speaker: All my questions need to be asked before I start recording, looking up pronunciations, although frequently I'll do that while I'm recording because uh you just don't know.
• 19:04
  Speaker: And the author will give you the pronunciation of the main character's names, but then you get to this and you're like, is it mischievous or mischievous?
• 19:11
  Speaker: Right.
• 19:12
  Speaker: You know, yeah, yeah.
• 19:14
  Speaker: You know, even simple words that you say every day.
• 19:17
  Speaker: So this, so the print so there's the prep work, the recording work, and then so maybe I've recorded two hours in the morning.
• 19:24
  Speaker: In the evening, I'll go back and I look at, we do something called punch and roll.
• 19:30
  Speaker: So that means a punch and roll, I'm going to read, I make a mistake, I go back before the mistake, set my timer, and it reads me back, and I just roll back into the text.
• 19:41
  Speaker: So it's a little bit like editing as you go.
• 19:44
  Speaker: But those breaks, every one of those breaks is an opportunity for a mistake.
• 19:48
  Speaker: And we don't want any of those in the final uh files.
• 19:51
  Speaker: So I go and I just listen to the breaks and make sure that I set my cursor at the right spot, and there's not a bunch of breath before, or I haven't cut off the R or the G at the end of the word.
• 20:03
  Speaker: And so I do all that and then I package that file, and I use um I use a professional audio engineer for my post-production.
• 20:13
  Speaker: Some people do it themselves.
• 20:15
  Speaker: I don't recommend it.
• 20:16
  Speaker: Uh but it is doable.
• 20:19
  Speaker: I have done my own post-production for some books, but I much prefer to hire somebody who's who's really good at post-production.
• 20:29
  Ellie Alexander: Yeah, I mean, to me, that feels like the equivalent in um, you know, print production where it's like you want fresh eyes, you want somebody else to do those last passes, right?
• 20:37
  Ellie Alexander: This is like fresh ears on the project to be like, oh wait, there's this little spot.
• 20:41
  Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
• 20:42
  Speaker: Well, proofing.
• 20:43
  Speaker: Never, never proof your own audio.
• 20:45
  Speaker: Don't proof your own work because your mind has already, you know, told you what you think should be on the page.
• 20:52
  Speaker: You see, you think you got it right.
• 20:54
  Speaker: I send my work to a proofer or my audio engineer has a proofer.
• 20:59
  Speaker: They send back what's called a pickup packet.
• 21:02
  Speaker: And that packet might have my last one had about 80, which is great for a 10 to what was it, 11 hour book.
• 21:10
  Speaker: So that means there's 80 spots where I need to go back in and re-record a sentence to make sure that it's nice and smooth.
• 21:19
  Speaker: And usually I left out a word or I added a word in that didn't belong there, or I switched to.
• 21:26
  Ellie Alexander: Yeah, like we do.
• 21:28
  Ellie Alexander: Well, and this is why, you know, if readers are like, wow, why are audio books so expensive?
• 21:32
  Ellie Alexander: Here you go, right?
• 21:34
  Ellie Alexander: Think of how much time and people are touching it.
• 21:37
  Ellie Alexander: And really, this is almost like another editorial pass, too, in the process.
• 21:42
  Ellie Alexander: I mean, you're not changing the original content, but you, in terms of the audio piece, are doing editorial work.
• 21:49
  Speaker: So that's actually really important because a lot of authors and some of my newer authors didn't realize maybe in their first book that if I'm going, if you want me to be an editor, which Something I've done and I can do, that's a different service.
• 22:04
  Speaker: So obviously, when I find an odd when I find an obvious typo, because I've met with my authors, I feel I'm friends with my authors, I will send a handful of typos to the author if I find them and they can fix them in their ebooks.
• 22:20
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 22:20
  Speaker: Um, however, if there's a lot of problems, my job is actually to record exactly what you wrote.
• 22:29
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 22:30
  Speaker: I might, hopefully, in that second pass, if there's something that's that I don't understand, or I'm like, this is odd, or you have the same word, you know, three times, I might reach out to you and be, did you mean to do this before I start recording?
• 22:46
  Speaker: Um, once I've started recording, uh it's whatever you wrote.
• 22:51
  Speaker: So um there is an additional cost associated with if you listen.
• 22:57
  Speaker: So my one of my um authors likes to proof her own work after I give her finished vials, and she discovered a, you know, she walked into the bedroom, but she was already in the bedroom.
• 23:10
  Speaker: Right.
• 23:11
  Speaker: Yes.
• 23:11
  Speaker: Right.
• 23:12
  Speaker: She really wanted to fit, but she really wanted to fix it, right?
• 23:15
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 23:15
  Speaker: But that means I have to go back to my engineer and he has to fix it.
• 23:20
  Speaker: And it wasn't my mistake.
• 23:22
  Speaker: So I fixed my mistakes on my on my dime.
• 23:26
  Speaker: Um, and the author ended up, I don't know, it was, it was not, it was like, it wasn't a lot of money money.
• 23:32
  Speaker: We ended up being able to uh uh only change, I think, two files.
• 23:36
  Speaker: So it was like an hour of work.
• 23:39
  Speaker: But, you know, no, as uh because somebody asked recently on one of the blogs, you know, do I read, do I reread my book before I go to my narrator and edit it for audio?
• 23:50
  Ellie Alexander: Uh yeah, right?
• 23:52
  Speaker: You can.
• 23:52
  Speaker: You know, I it's a not a bad idea, it's not a bad idea.
• 23:57
  Speaker: And and I have an author or the third book I did for her.
• 24:00
  Speaker: She's like, uh, you know, I'll give it to you next week.
• 24:03
  Speaker: I'm going through it, you know, with a with a uh her thoughts on audio.
• 24:08
  Speaker: What will it sound?
• 24:09
  Speaker: What were some of those sentences, especially those long, beautiful, flowery sentences?
• 24:15
  Speaker: Is there a spot to breathe in there?
• 24:17
  Speaker: I would love it.
• 24:19
  Ellie Alexander: You're like, please.
• 24:20
  Speaker: Give me some suggestions on that.
• 24:23
  Ellie Alexander: Victoria Lynn, to all authors who might be listening, reality rights, uh, give us a little space to pause.
• 24:29
  Ellie Alexander: I think that's such an important point.
• 24:30
  Ellie Alexander: And this might also track to the idea that for a lot of books and publishing, whether it's indie or traditional or something in the middle, the goal is often to have the audio release at the same time.
• 24:43
  Ellie Alexander: So, you know, this might not be the finished, finished, finished product that you're getting.
• 24:48
  Ellie Alexander: So that could be a crucial part of the chain to make sure an author has been really clear about like, well, this should be tight.
• 24:55
  Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
• 24:56
  Speaker: And it's interesting how uh this is a new, this is a new trend.
• 25:00
  Speaker: The I've got to have my audiobook out at the same time.
• 25:03
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 25:03
  Speaker: And Elie, I was actually using some of your advice uh from our bookish group.
• 25:09
  Speaker: I was talking to some authors, and I'm like, don't think of it as a release day.
• 25:14
  Speaker: Right.
• 25:15
  Speaker: Think of it as a release month.
• 25:17
  Speaker: Yes.
• 25:17
  Speaker: So uh my one of the mystery authors that I've just recently worked with, um she had just released the book, hired me, and I think we had the audio done a month.
• 25:32
  Speaker: I think she had the audio up and ready a month later.
• 25:35
  unknown: Yeah.
• 25:35
  Speaker: And she said what she she saw another pickup in the sales, not in the audio sales, but in her book sales.
• 25:42
  Speaker: Yes.
• 25:43
  Speaker: And so it's a lot of people are like, I'm never gonna make Mac my money from doing audiobooks.
• 25:48
  Speaker: It's like, well, maybe not, but it's also another marketing tool for you and something else that you can promote to again reinvigorate maybe one of your best sellers that you know, you're seeing the numbers go down.
• 26:03
  Speaker: What can you do to push him back up again?
• 26:06
  Speaker: So it's just an idea.
• 26:07
  Speaker: Absolutely.
• 26:08
  Ellie Alexander: No, I think that's great advice.
• 26:10
  Ellie Alexander: Okay, let's circle back to the level of spam that is just inundating our inboxes.
• 26:16
  Ellie Alexander: What are some things you think new writers should be leery of?
• 26:21
  Ellie Alexander: Because I work with a lot of new writers who are starting out and they might see something that comes in that seems shiny and exciting.
• 26:29
  Ellie Alexander: And is it real?
• 26:31
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 26:32
  Speaker: This is uh it's difficult on both sides.
• 26:35
  Speaker: So, you know, I mentioned ACX earlier as a platform that is still probably the most popular place to go out and find a narrator.
• 26:45
  Speaker: That said, narrators, just like authors, you should be able to find them online.
• 26:52
  Speaker: And I do not have a huge, I'm not I'm not, I'm I'm older, I'm not really into social media.
• 26:58
  Speaker: I don't do TikTok.
• 26:59
  Speaker: I know a lot of authors who have found narrators via TikTok.
• 27:03
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 27:04
  Speaker: Um I, you know, but you should be able to find some sort of presence uh associated with the name.
• 27:10
  Speaker: I have a I have a website, you can look at my website, there's an email address, you can contact me.
• 27:15
  Speaker: So that's one thing.
• 27:17
  Speaker: When you're getting um auditions from some, if so you put out your work, you get auditions in AI or virtual voice, does a great first chapter.
• 27:28
  Speaker: They do they are they do, you know, a great three minutes, right?
• 27:32
  Speaker: So you will hear something and be like, this is super three minutes.
• 27:35
  Speaker: It and it's horrible to say it, but it's true, it's true.
• 27:39
  Speaker: It it sounds like a person.
• 27:40
  Speaker: You can choose a voice, you can steal a voice from some famous actor, and you can get your three minutes.
• 27:45
  Speaker: Uh-huh.
• 27:46
  Speaker: But what'll happen is by chapter two, it's pretty obvious that you've got, yeah, that it's the same, the same cadence all over the place.
• 27:57
  Speaker: I did end up doing a book for an author who paid, he got an audition.
• 28:02
  Speaker: He paid, uh actually, he did not end up paying for it.
• 28:05
  Speaker: He proofed it.
• 28:06
  Speaker: So, Ellie, your approach would not work here.
• 28:09
  Speaker: He listened to the whole book and discovered there were missing sentences, discovered that there was acronyms that were mispronounced, and he thought he had hired a real person.
• 28:22
  Speaker: So he came, so he came back to me and we had face-to-face meetings and we what and we came up with a deal because also his book uh they did it was eight, it was over, it was a hundred thousand words, and it was done in eight and a half hours.
• 28:38
  Speaker: So that that is one thing.
• 28:41
  Speaker: So a book is that means it was super fast.
• 28:44
  Speaker: It would be super fast.
• 28:46
  Speaker: From I'm just thinking from an author's standpoint, I think it's almost more, it's almost more difficult.
• 28:53
  Speaker: But you're if you're gonna get a bunch of auditions in, listen, don't, you know, don't lock on to your first your first favorite.
• 29:00
  Speaker: Listen to a bunch of them, and you may start realizing, you'll start just realizing which ones are spam, and you know, within 10 seconds you should be able to throw them out once you get practiced to doing that.
• 29:11
  Speaker: From a narrator side, and I guess from an author's also, I get cold solicitations.
• 29:16
  Speaker: You know, uh, I go and look them up, I look up their work, I see what their sales are.
• 29:23
  Speaker: I got one that looked really real, and then I went and looked, and I was like, well, it's the right name.
• 29:28
  Speaker: But he was the editor, and the last activity on this book was 2016.
• 29:35
  Speaker: And you know, I think uh I I go old school.
• 29:40
  Speaker: If you're gonna hire somebody, insist on a meeting.
• 29:43
  Speaker: Yes, um, you know, uh and that's I I don't know any better way.
• 29:48
  Speaker: There's still a chance they're going to then substitute out their voice, and but it's much less likely once you get to know somebody that they're gonna try and cheat you.
• 29:58
  Speaker: But um but the spam is a problem.
• 30:00
  Speaker: I I changed, I told you I changed my profile.
• 30:04
  Speaker: Um, I added a duet because also really hot today is getting dual dual or duet narration.
• 30:11
  Speaker: And so I wanted to make sure I had a sample.
• 30:14
  Speaker: So for the first time in a long time, I changed my ACX profile.
• 30:17
  Speaker: I added a new sample, and I immediately got 14 spam uh mails.
• 30:23
  Speaker: And it used to be that I would change a sample and I would actually get authors find me because when you change your samples, your profile goes to the top of ACX's list.
• 30:34
  Speaker: So the next person who comes in sees the people who've changed their samples.
• 30:38
  Speaker: Um, and that's not happening.
• 30:40
  Speaker: It's it's broken.
• 30:41
  Speaker: It's very, very broken.
• 30:43
  Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
• 30:43
  Ellie Alexander: I mean, I do think the the gift of living in the age of AI right now is just a resilience in human connection.
• 30:52
  Ellie Alexander: And so I love that your advice is like, yeah, let's go analog, let's get on a Zoom call, let's actually talk so you can see I'm human.
• 30:59
  Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
• 31:00
  Speaker: The narrator community um is a wonderful group of people, you know, mostly, right?
• 31:07
  Speaker: But by and large, it's one of the best communities that I that I've been a part of.
• 31:12
  Speaker: And most people are willing to help you.
• 31:15
  Speaker: So when I send people notes, I'm always like, look, even if I'm not your voice, I happy, I know, I I've been an author.
• 31:23
  Speaker: I would like to be an author.
• 31:24
  Speaker: I would love to talk to you and help you find the right place for you and and work through this because it is, it's daunting.
• 31:32
  Speaker: Any new, any new area you go into, there's a lot of learning to be done.
• 31:37
  Ellie Alexander: Yeah, it's a steep learning curve.
• 31:39
  Ellie Alexander: Okay, let's talk about some of the varying styles of books that you've narrated over the last couple of years, because it's the gamut now, right?
• 31:48
  Ellie Alexander: But do you have a favorite genre or when you're actively looking for new projects?
• 31:53
  Ellie Alexander: Do you have like your go-to sweet spots?
• 31:57
  Speaker: So, you know, um, when I started this, I thought that romance, again, romance is one of the it's the largest market segment, right?
• 32:06
  Speaker: And I figured that that was going to be the area that I would be getting, you know, most of my work from.
• 32:13
  Speaker: And as it is, I've actually done one romance series.
• 32:16
  Speaker: It turns out my first series that I stumbled into was science fiction.
• 32:21
  Speaker: And science fiction, I think it's something I love doing science fiction.
• 32:26
  Speaker: It was an action adventure.
• 32:27
  Speaker: It was a little bloodier than the stuff that I prefer to read.
• 32:32
  Speaker: Right.
• 32:32
  Speaker: But I had so much fun.
• 32:35
  Speaker: And again, the the acting challenges in science fiction, every one of those books had something crazy happening, whether it was huge crowd scenes, you know, fighting the eight-foot-tall orcs, uh, translating gladiator lemurs through wrist translators, um, hive minds taking over bodies, and but you have to make sure the character still sounds like themselves, but that the reader also knows they've been taken over.
• 33:06
  Speaker: So I guess, I mean, I I really like the science fiction.
• 33:10
  Speaker: And then mystery is probably the other kind of standby.
• 33:14
  Speaker: And a lot of times you'll have large casts for that.
• 33:17
  Speaker: And I think one of the sweet spots for me is that I do have a really broad vocal range, which makes me for a solo narrator a good choice because I can do male voices pretty darn well, and I can do female voices pretty darn well.
• 33:35
  Speaker: And not every male voice is deep and gravelly, and not every female voice is sweet and high.
• 33:42
  Speaker: There's it, but there's different ways that we make our voices that have nothing to do with where on the scale they are, but having that versatility, it really does help.
• 33:53
  Ellie Alexander: Have you ever had an image in your mind or a character and how you think they sound, kind of going back to your client who was like, oh no, he doesn't sound like this, where you're sure in reading it that you're like, oh, this is that character, and then you are the author's like, no, that's not that character at all.
• 34:11
  Speaker: So part of the prep, the prep packet that I mentioned before for people who haven't done it before, is casting your own characters, right?
• 34:19
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 34:19
  Speaker: As the narrator, I mean, I've had authors who are like, oh no, whatever you whatever you want, just do whatever you want.
• 34:26
  Speaker: I'm like, okay.
• 34:27
  Speaker: Okay, you're living with it.
• 34:28
  Speaker: But for the but the main characters, again, my first author was one of the best, and he actually sent me pictures.
• 34:36
  Speaker: And he sent me pictures, he sent me suggestions of uh actors.
• 34:42
  Speaker: Um, there was a main character that I didn't he didn't tell me much about him, and so I went out and found who I thought he sounded like.
• 34:52
  Speaker: Important point we are not impersonators, right?
• 34:55
  Speaker: So you tell me nobody knows what's going on in my head.
• 34:59
  Speaker: So if it's uh what is what is the oh uh I had a couple Owens, is it not Jeff Owens, the uh there's an actor Owen Wilson?
• 35:10
  Speaker: Owen Wilson, okay, yeah, yeah.
• 35:13
  Speaker: But I just nobody knows that Owen Wilson is in my head when I'm doing this character.
• 35:18
  Speaker: But he's got you know, he's got the nose and he's got the cadence, and so the idea is not that we're gonna be able to make the I'm not gonna be able to make it sound like Sandra Bullock.
• 35:30
  Speaker: Right.
• 35:30
  Speaker: However, if I know that Sandra Bullock is who you see in your mind when your character is talking, that that does help me because it's a lot of it is again about the cadence or about the uh the accents and how they speak.
• 35:45
  Speaker: So in nonfiction work, whenever possible, I always listen to the author.
• 35:50
  Speaker: I find a YouTube video or something of the author speaking so that I know how does it, you know, how or I have a meeting with them like this, and I so I can hear how they speak.
• 36:01
  Speaker: Because they're gonna like listening to people who speak like them.
• 36:06
  Ellie Alexander: That's such a good point.
• 36:07
  Ellie Alexander: No, I hadn't even thought about that, but you really do have to have the entire cast separated.
• 36:11
  Ellie Alexander: And then on that note, have you ever gotten confused in terms of voices?
• 36:15
  Ellie Alexander: Like, I don't know how you would keep them all straight.
• 36:18
  Speaker: Yeah, so there's there's uh tricks for that.
• 36:21
  Speaker: But basically, what I do when I start recording, so you know, you've approved our your first 15 and we start recording the book.
• 36:29
  Speaker: Sometimes I'll do it ahead of time, or I'll do the main characters ahead of time, and then the sub-voices I'll do on the fly.
• 36:36
  Speaker: But I have a video file.
• 36:38
  Speaker: So I have an uh this is the computer I use um for uh usually all this computer has on it is my audio files.
• 36:45
  Speaker: So I have an audio file that I keep open that are voice matches.
• 36:49
  Speaker: And whenever I get to a new character, I will grab a snippet of their voice and I drop it into my voice file because I have had you know books in number eight.
• 37:02
  Speaker: You've probably, Ellie, you've probably gone and grabbed a character from book number three and had him show up in book number eight as a love interest or something.
• 37:11
  Speaker: I'd it happens.
• 37:13
  Speaker: So having these audio files, and I have one for for every book, and I have folders for every series so that I can find them, and it helps me.
• 37:23
  Speaker: Also, I get to turn it off and on again or press pause.
• 37:27
  Speaker: So if I'm about to move from if I'm about to move from my main character, who always sounds like me, by the way, I'm about to move my main character into the Russian, the Russian mafioso, I might pause and take a breath and then go and listen to what the Russian mafioso sounded like last time I spoke him, or the first time I spoke him, and put myself into that.
• 37:55
  Speaker: So you can always pause and get now.
• 37:58
  Speaker: Again, I'm paid per finished hours, so I don't want to be doing a lot of that.
• 38:02
  Speaker: But again, when we're switching chapters, when we're switching characters, uh, we talked earlier about, you know, how you how much time you spend.
• 38:11
  Speaker: I always try and end at the end of a chapter.
• 38:14
  Speaker: You've I'm sure you've listened to audiobooks where like in the middle of a chapter, something weird happens, the sound drops or raises, or so I always try and find a really good uh stopping place.
• 38:28
  Speaker: And the same thing with those pickups, getting them in so that you it doesn't jar the reader.
• 38:33
  Speaker: Because the whole goal is to get the reader immersed in the book the same way they might be as if they were reading a print copy.
• 38:42
  Ellie Alexander: Yeah, love it.
• 38:43
  Ellie Alexander: Um okay, well, before we wrap up, if there are new authors who want to work with you, like how do they reach out to you?
• 38:50
  Ellie Alexander: Do they come to your website?
• 38:51
  Ellie Alexander: We'll put it in the show notes.
• 38:52
  Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
• 38:53
  Speaker: My so my website is the best place to reach out to me.
• 38:57
  Speaker: I have a form, but I also have my email right on there.
• 39:01
  Speaker: And so I I do check that.
• 39:03
  Speaker: And again, uh, whether it's me or whether it's another narrator, don't be afraid to reach out and just have a conversation and ask the ask the questions because we love talking about our audiobooks.
• 39:17
  Speaker: And we have resources for you as a new author on what you need to know before you before you sign any any contracts.
• 39:26
  Speaker: I think that's so critical.
• 39:27
  Ellie Alexander: Okay, so um, I think before we sign off, we should have a little fun.
• 39:31
  Ellie Alexander: So normally when the tech guy and I sign off, we say um something like until next time.
• 39:38
  Ellie Alexander: But I would love it if you could do an until next time that would be romance and then mystery.
• 39:47
  Ellie Alexander: Oh gosh.
• 39:47
  Ellie Alexander: Okay.
• 39:48
  Ellie Alexander: Okay, I'll put you on the spot.
• 39:49
  Ellie Alexander: Dun, dun, dun.
• 39:50
  Ellie Alexander: Okay.
• 39:51
  Speaker: There's a lot of body work in narration too.
• 39:53
  Speaker: It really, there really is.
• 39:55
  Speaker: So as a romance, I might be like until next time.
• 40:02
  Speaker: I love it.
• 40:05
  Speaker: Until next time, we're what's the other one?
• 40:07
  Speaker: Um Mystery, dark thriller.
• 40:10
  Speaker: Until next time.
• 40:14
  Ellie Alexander: There you have it, Victoria Lynn Arbor.
• 40:16
  Ellie Alexander: Thanks so much for being my guest.
• 40:18
  Ellie Alexander: I always learned so much from you about just audio that I don't know myself, which is incredible.
• 40:23
  Speaker: Oh, Ellie, thank you.
• 40:24
  Speaker: And thank you so much for having me.
• 40:26
  Speaker: It's really uh I've had a chance to listen to some of your other podcasts and you know, learning so much as an author as well.
• 40:34
  Speaker: So I appreciate you.
• 40:35
  Speaker: Same.
• 40:36
  Speaker: All right, I'll do my bad until next time.
• 40:40
  Speaker: Until next time.